And Tony Benn had a go earlier in the week ...

If you've been awake at all over the last few days, you'll have noticed that this issue has now provoked a bit of a political storm, with Archbishops, MPs, Ministers and just about every major newspaper pitching in to condemn the BBC for its decision. Journalists' unions have urged a review, and staff at the BBC are said to be utterly enraged, but face the sack if they speak out. What is perhaps most remarkable has been the exposure of these routine professions of "impartiality" as little more than a fig-leaf - a form of protective excuse-making to ward off criticism. When two high-profile journalists (prompted by the charlatans who broadcast Channel 4's fraudulent documentary on climate change) laid into the BBC for its "Planet Relief" proposal in 2007, one of the objections was that it was not the business of the organisation to campaign on such issues (though they were apparently unable to explain why this level of complaint was not applied whenever Crimewatch takes it upon itself to do the work of the police). This time, however, astonishingly the BBC has been complementing its appeals to "impartiality" precisely with attempts to tell the aid agencies how to do their job, expressing concerns about delivering aid in an area of conflict (though DEC has frequently been able to broadcast appeals for the populations of conflict-stricken areas in the past), and claiming, as you can see in the Tony Benn broadcast above, that the aid might fall into the "wrong hands" (again, apparently not a concern in the Congo or Darfur).

It's pretty clear that the Israel lobby has been working overtime to pressure the BBC into submission. In the words of a former senior editor, cited by the London Evening Standard, "There was a formidable lobby backing Israel and the letters would stream in. The pressure was immense." And, after Lord Hutton's body blow on behalf of the Government claimed the scalps of Dyke and Gilligan, the tirades of the right-wing press and (God help us) the Russell Brand-Jonathan Ross affair, the corporation is now more sensitive to such pressure than ever. As veteran BBC journalist Martin Bell put it on Newsnight last night, "they're flinching from blows they haven't even received". It was particularly unedifying to see that of only two interviewees invited to discuss the matter on the programme - the Telegraph's Janet Daly and former Director General Greg Dyke - both backed the decision not to air the broadcast; and not only this, but in a supreme irony, a decision resulting from the pressure of the Israel lobby and the right-wing press was used to further berate the BBC along the same lines, as Daly laid into both the license fee and the BBC's insulation from market forces. Indeed on the same day that this affair was blowing up in the Corporation's face, Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail was complaining about "The BBC’s bias in favour of wild radical causes", which are "not just to be found in its news and current affairs output", apparently. This is just one example of the dominant political climate that has so cowed the Corporation that it cannot broadcast a short appeal for a civilian population suffering an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. Meanwhile the liberal press have evinced their usual surfeit of timidity. According to the Observer's editorial, for instance,

Israeli and Palestinian groups both regularly accuse the corporation of institutional bias, which is probably a crude indication that, in its journalism, the BBC gets the balance about right.

A more telling non sequitur it is hard to imagine. As the leading American media scholar Robert McChesney points out in his book The Problem of the Media, some extreme factions of the Nazi party apparently criticised the German media under Hitler for being too soft on communists and Jews. The fact that there is always a group insane enough to keep complaining to the media on behalf of the powerful has no bearing on whether the content of that media's coverage actually supports them or not. Indeed if the coverage is biased enough, will it not in fact help foster and create such a deranged lobby?

A more illuminating account of the major forces acting on the BBC is provided by Mark Lawson in a recent piece for the Media Guardian. Though he gives the BBC far too much credit (it's his employer after all), particularly on the subject of the Falklands war, and if anything underplays the extent of the pressure brought to bear on it, Lawson does provide some insight into the problematic position that has bedevilled the broadcaster since its inception. As he puts it,

At the moment when the BBC was incorporated by Royal Charter - after five years as a private company, created in 1922 by Marconi and other early wireless interests - a magnificent but probably impossible paradox was attempted. The company would be dependent on the government for its existence and funding - beginning with a 10 shilling radio licence that gradually expanded to become a de facto tax on viewing and listening - but the political overlords were required to refrain from editorial interference, even though the actions of the ruling administration were certain to be a frequent subject for the service.

And, apart from this internal contradiction, the birth was also attended by external tension. Newspapers were immediately nervous of the competition to their interests represented by radio and would later be even more alarmed by the extension into television. Print's suspicion of the cosseted newcomer would frequently manifest itself in a desire to undermine the state broadcaster.

So, from the earliest days of its life, the BBC was under brooding scrutiny from two groups: politicians, who suffered a nagging irritation at having to pay but having no say, and a press that resented a rival granted unprecedented national significance and a unique method of funding. In these two ways, the broadcaster's founders were inviting trouble and, at various moments between 1927 and 2008, it has catastrophically arrived.

The UK Government's relationship with the US and with Israel have naturally made the Israel/Palestine conflict a far more sensitive issue for the corporation than it would otherwise have been. As former Middle East correspondent Tim Llewellyn puts it, "BBC managers try to second-guess our government and even outreach it in grovelling to the United States and Israel". Papers like the Telegraph - which inhereted (and has maintained) a viscerally pro-Israeli line from its former owner Conrad Black - have helped to reinforce the "red lines" the corporation fears to cross. And then there's the constant roar of the Israel lobby, kicking up "dust-storms of propaganda" and piling constant pressure on journalists and editors. The results, as we can now see, have been pretty dismal. As the FT recalled yesterday (and similar studies have shown likewise):

An independent panel on BBC coverage of the conflict, published in 2006 reported shortcomings that objectively favoured Israel: more coverage of Israeli fatalities; more Israeli spokesmen; and, above all, “the failure to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, reflecting the fact that one side is in control and the other lives under occupation”.

This is why the efforts to resist its decision on the Gaza appeal - including occupations of BBC headquarters in England and Scotland - deserve our heartfelt praise and admiration. I would like to hope that the indignation displayed in these protests can be channeled into a serious and formidable movement for democratic media reform. Yet the auspices are not great. At the moment, such protests are in danger of being co-opted to further the interests of the corporate media vultures forever circling the BBC - the same which have played no small part in leading us to this depressing outcome in the first place. It would be regrettable if those activists currently disposing of their TV licenses played into this agenda. But I must admit, the disgracefulness, the sheer callous inhumanity of the BBC's decision, may have left them with little choice.